Linux Mint Forums

Forum rules
There are no such things as "stupid" questions. However if you think your question is a bit stupid, then this is the right place for you to post it. Please stick to easy to-the-point questions that you feel people can answer fast. For long and complicated questions prefer the other forums within the support section.Before you post please read how to get help

I just got a new Thinkpad T530 and have LMDE 201204 running on it (my very first install). Periodically it just freezes hard (no mouse cursor movement, no response to ping, etc). I'm having a lot of difficulty troubleshooting this. Since it just freezes, I'm not seeing anything in logs, etc. on boot up. Sometimes it goes hours and hours without a freeze up, and sometimes freezes twice in 5-10 minutes.

Turned off rapidstart in BIOS (saw it on a forum)Change SATA from ACHI -> compatability (I swear this helped for a while, but now it is freezing again)

What I will try:

put SSD image onto original HD (waiting for drive caddy to ship)

What I've noticed:

Freezes seem somewhat randomFreezes are intermittent - sometimes not for hours, sometimes twice in a few minutesThey've never happened under heavy load (bonnie++ ran fine, handbrake ran fine)They've never happened when I'm not using the laptop (never after sleep or hibernate - one time 3-4 min after hibernate resume, but only once)They always seem to happen under light usage (tinkering in one program or another)There is no correlation to any one specific appFreezes have occurred in Cinnamon and KDEIt does not appear related to system temperatureIt has only frozen when using the SSD and never running Live USB LMDE or Windows on HD (granted, I didn't use them nearly as long in that configuration either)I can't 100% rule out bad hardware - I only ran Windows on the included hard drive for a very short time.

I'm really struggling here. If anyone either a) has any specific ideas to try or b) a good general strategy for diagnosis I'd much appreciate it. I almost wish it was happening more frequently so I could feel more confident in where something is helping or not. Other this this one painful issue, LMDE 'just worked' (well I did need to use the UP5 wifi firmware deb, but big deal). Far as I can tell, everything else works flawlessly - if only it were stable I'd be very impressed with this distro.

Been playing more with this and I *think* (not yet conclusive) the freezing only occurs when I'm on battery. Googling this gets some hits from other distros, so this may be the case (haven't used laptop enough yet to be sure). I suppose some form of power management issue should be high on my suspect list if this is the case. Well hopefully at least I'm making some progress.

The hangs seem to happen in pairs: if it hangs once then it seems to hang again a 2nd time within about 30 second of rebooting. After that, it may or may not hang again right away. Strange.It happens with KDE desktop effects on or offIt happens on battery and when plugged inIt happens even if I blacklist thinkpad_acpi and apci_cpufreqIt happens even on the new UP5 kernel (3.2.0-3)Fans kick on when it hangs making me think CPU is in a tight loop?I can't seem to get sysrq functions to work when it hangs (maybe I just have the wrong key combo: Fn + Alt + S and then magic key)

I'm afraid I'll soon have to give up on LMDE and try a different distro with a vastly different kernel, etc. versions. I don't really want to but I don't see much of a choice.. I've exhausted everything I know how to do. The only test I'm really curious about yet is switching off the SSD to the HD, but my caddy won't be here until Monday. I'll give it until then and then I give up. :-/

I finally gave up and switched to Kubuntu 12.04. Everything works great and it has been stable for the last 2 days with zero crashes. I suspect on other systems LMDE works just fine, but it right now is a no go on the Thinkpad T530 as best I can tell (at least in my particular configuration).

It is possible upgrading to UP5 would fix the issue (though the kernel alone didn't fix the issue). I had freezes just in the live CD without the SSD mounted, so that takes it out of the equation most likely. After thinking on this, my best guest is that it is the Intel xorg driver. All my freezes happen when some amount of graphics are being drawn, often when complex transitions were taking place. Remotely using the system via SSH or letting it idle has never produced a crash, only interactive use.

I noticed LMDE uses version 2.18 of the Intel driver and Kubuntu 12.04 uses 2.17 (I think UP5 jumps to 2.19 if I recall). I wonder if there was a regression that causes freezes on Intel 4K video in 2.18? Not sure, but wanted to leave my last clues here for anyone struggling with stability on the T530.

Best of luck to all those using LMDE - it is a nice distro it just didn't work out for me.

I suspect it was the particular 3.2 kernel that was giving you issues.

I've had issues on some of my machines (not random freezing) but other types of freezing, like freezing on login etc. The first thing I always try is trying a kernel +1 and -1 (so 3.3 and 3.0 in your case). I've seen some weird issues with some kernels like constant freezing when using a usb keyboard with kernel 3.4.x (but not in <3.4) and constant freezing with esata cardbus cards with 3.2.x (but not in 3.3 or 3.0).

i have a t530 and i experienceD the same,exactly the same oh how the same it was you do not want to know. yes the laptop I blame instead f my incompetence, why not? I have been struggling with it since 6th of september and now is 22th.

I tried solusos but it is a disaster

(i was a SWORN Mint user before gnome3, now i will go back to windows after 7 years of linux desktop experience because of that ****** modern DE abusing the name of Gnome.

I am fed up

and No, MATE is not gnome, it does not feel like gnome, it did not work for me and I spent 2 days fighting with it. I did not try the cinamon thing as read that it is outdated .

I am running 12.04 LTS and got the same problem. So far, I could reproduce it by running Filezilla. The machine completely freezes, no mouse, no terminal, not even the magic kernel commands work anymore, and yes, the fan spins up.

I cannot get kernel 3.3 or higher to work on my machine with the installed Ubuntu on HDD. Somehow the graphics fail but I currently have a 13.04 alpha running from thumbddrive and will see if this works ok or not.

Already had a freeze without Filezilla open when I was starting Firefox. Survied an entire day when not using Filezilla, but since I had a freeze without it today, this is rather a lucky incident than system. But at least Filezilla seems to provoke it.

Nothing in any log files, because the system stops instantly. So I suspect the kernel in conjunction with the T530 hardware. Turned of hyperthreading, power management, and so on... all the same. Because it happens with an 3.5 kernel as well, it is not only a 3.2 problem.

sorry for hijacking this thread but I also have a T530 with Debian Wheezy (testing) on it and I have the same problems.Just a complete lock-up with looping sound, the first time it happened while I was watching some HD video on youtube, the three following times it happened when I tried to start a virtual machine with virtualbox.My hypothesis was aswell that it might have to do something with the Intel video driver. Sad to hear that a kernel upgrade does not fix the problem.

Also strange since I know other people, one using Fedora and the other one Ubuntu, who also have a T530 and no problems.

Later I upgraded to 12.10 and removed the config again. Everything is working fine now. Additionally I moved from the unreliable Gnome Fallback Mode to Cinnamon 1.6.7.

What does that option do?

Currently I am thinking about either upgrading the kernel to 3.7 or moving away from Debian to something else... hmm.For now I have disabled the Intel video card in BIOS and got Debian to use the NVidia card, I wonder whether this will fix the problem.

Though I am glad that you solved the problem, it gives me at least a bit of hope.So it's working fine without freezes now? I still have time until Friday next week to return that thing and I am currently unsure.

This options disabled the RC6 deep state sleep support for Intel Graphics in the Linux kernel. Was enabled for Kernel 3.2 for the first time by default. Seems to have been buggy for some machines or combinations. Later kernels have an improved or fixed support. Read reports that 3.3 or higher works. Seem to work for me with 3.5 or higher. Friend of mine said 3.6 works. So going for 3.7 is a good option as well.

ReneS wrote:This options disabled the RC6 deep state sleep support for Intel Graphics in the Linux kernel. Was enabled for Kernel 3.2 for the first time by default. Seems to have been buggy for some machines or combinations. Later kernels have an improved or fixed support. Read reports that 3.3 or higher works. Seem to work for me with 3.5 or higher. Friend of mine said 3.6 works. So going for 3.7 is a good option as well.

i915 is the chipset or family and Intel HD4000 the integrated graphics. The driver is still named i915 but already incorporates all other cards and chipsets. Hope someone with more knowledge can help to explain that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_HD_Graphics

Okay.I turned on the intel card again but due to what I did when it was turned off there is no 3d acceleration available for it anymore, trying to fix that.In the meantime I have the following question: I have added i915.i915_enable_rc6=0 to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT (basically what was suggested here), is there a way to verify whether it took any effect?

the sandy and ivy bridge intel processors (I5 and I7) have an integrated gpu (HD3000 and HD4000 respectively); early support for these cpu/gpus was added in kernel 3.2 (current debian testing/lmde and mint maya 13/ubuntu 12.04) but as ReneS shared above was/is buggy.first time i saw this bug was here > http://forum.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=112543

at this point (if you are using lmde/debian testing) the only easy option is adding the liquorix kernel http://liquorix.net/ and install it

tanith, if you do not need to save as much power as possible, because you are always miles (kilometres for the rest of us) away from the next outlet, you can live with RC6 off for a while. It is just about power consumption.

Or you jump on the Ubuntu/Mint wagon and go with a later version and that should work for you.

Unfortunately powertop does not show anything for the GPU on this system.Oh well, I will just have to wait and see how it turns out.

I will try to keep this thread updated in case anyone wonders though it is probably related to the strange behaviour of the intel cards when they go into that low power consumption mode. Though I am still unsure whether this is the case.

Though it is fixed in the later kernel version, right?Mhm, maybe I will make a partition for Ubuntu this weekend and try it out.

[edit]

zerozero wrote:i just noticed this topic now

the sandy and ivy bridge intel processors (I5 and I7) have an integrated gpu (HD3000 and HD4000 respectively); early support for these cpu/gpus was added in kernel 3.2 (current debian testing/lmde and mint maya 13/ubuntu 12.04) but as ReneS shared above was/is buggy.first time i saw this bug was here > http://forum.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=112543

at this point (if you are using lmde/debian testing) the only easy option is adding the liquorix kernel http://liquorix.net/ and install it

That sounds interesting. I was actually not aware of Liquorix, I will have a look at it. I guess liquorix is the only easy option since the other one would be to upgrade to sid and hope that the freeze will soon turn into a release and the current sid becomes testing (it would not make the system any more stable but it would "feel" more stable :>).

[second edit]

ReneS wrote:tanith, if you do not need to save as much power as possible, because you are always miles (kilometres for the rest of us) away from the next outlet, you can live with RC6 off for a while. It is just about power consumption.

Or you jump on the Ubuntu/Mint wagon and go with a later version and that should work for you.

Oh I can live without a power outlet. One of the nice things about the T530 was the huge battery life but I guess without real optimus support and that r6 state it's not possible but I can definitely live without it since I am alway using it only a few metres away from an outlet. I just pray right now that it actually works.